If you squint hard enough, our late-1990s Bailey looks pretty much like a modern van. Not up close, of course, where the old-fashioned stripes, fluted aluminium sides and years
of wear make it look old. The basic outline of a caravan has not changed much over the years. Inside, however, a lot has changed, reflecting the current taste for plainer interiors. Less pattern and colour, less fuss, so if you’ve bought a pre-owned caravan, the interior can need to be modernised.
When you’re buying a new caravan nowadays tend to have larger lockers with flat doors, but most noticeably, they no longer feature heavy floral patterns on the upholstery.
The interiors can really date even the best used caravans and we were keen to try to cheer Penny up a bit.
I’ve had a caravan reupholstered in the past, and the results were stunning – but they were also expensive. If Penny was a much newer van, she might be worth dropping a couple of thousand on an interior revamp, but that is pretty much what the van is worth. Even more importantly, if you’re caravanning on a budget, you may not have the money – we didn’t; so our thoughts turned to more cost-effective solutions.
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Cover stories
My partner, Jen, mentioned that a lot of caravanners she has seen online have modernised their caravan interiors using stretch covers. These are essentially just a ‘bag’ of fabric, with a hoop of elastic sewn into the back. To fit them, you grab the cushion you want to wrap and pull the cover over the top.
The elastic ensures that the cover is pulled taut over the cushion, to give a smart effect of a freshly covered seat.
You don’t need to be any good at upholstery, or even have a lot of time at your disposal to update things.
The covers themselves are actually designed for domestic sofas and armchairs, but given that customers buy one cover for each cushion, rather than a set per chair or sofa, it is a simple matter of measuring up and seeing what you can find that most closely matches your caravan’s configuration.
The final point that makes loose covers such an attractive option is the price. With online retailers selling covers at less than £5 per cushion, you can feasibly liven up a large interior and still get change from £100. We decided to give it a go.
Our first job was to measure Penny’s interior. This process simply involved picking up each seat cushion in turn, measuring the width and length, and then writing it down. However, Penny has lounges front and back, so we had quite a lot of measuring to do.
There were 12 cushions in total, so we needed to find a cover design we liked, and to work out which of the premade cover sizes matched the best.
Stretching the budget
Jen found a finish she liked on Shein, a supplier of clothes, furnishings and all manner of other things typically sold very cheaply.
Visit the site and search for ‘sofa covers’ and you will pretty soon be overwhelmed by the variety of stuff on offer! There are plenty of options for simple throw-style covers, as well as the more fitted type, which we wanted.
Incidentally, if your caravan has a fixed-bed caravan layout, throw covers for the sofas might be enough for you. In Penny, we need to make up the bed each night in the front lounge, so stretch-fit covers promised less fuss when converting from sofa to bed and back again.
Once you’ve found a pattern or colour that you like, the next thing you need to check is that Shein has everything you want in stock. There is a good reason for this. A lot of its stock comes from China and is stored in the UK for quick delivery. If what you need is not in stock, you could be waiting for a very long time for missing items to be shipped from the other side of the world. Or you could find it never comes back into stock and you then have the hassle of returns. Either way, it’s best to favour patterns and sizes with immediate availability to minimise any problems.
You won’t find the exact sizes you want, so get the smallest cover you can see that will be big enough to cover the target cushion. With the best sizes all decided, we placed our order for 12 new covers. Delivery times from Shein can be a bit fluid, but we were delighted to have our order turn up within a week.
We checked that everything we ordered had arrived, and that the covers all matched. Once we were happy we had all we needed, we set about fitting. Each cushion took around 10 minutes to fit roughly, but at least twice that time was spent pulling the covers taut, folding in excess fabric and generally improving the fit.
Finishing touches
Just covering up the cushions would definitely have improved the look of the interior, but the finishing touches are what make things look a lot sharper and more professional.
The Bailey cushions have a button-back design, and simply covering these up looks fine. But an even better bet is to pick up some clear elastic hair bands, which are easily found online. The smallest bands are the ones you want.
Once you have the bands, find a button on the cushion, pinch the cover over it and slip on the band. The elastic band will pull the cushion fabric tight over the button and give the cushions a real factory finish.
These will periodically pull away and need replacing, but with packs of 1000 bands giving you change from a fiver, it’s not a huge concern. It is a bit fiddly, but the effect is stunning.
Unfortunately, we also have a button missing from one of Penny’s cushions, but we are keeping our eyes peeled for ways to fix this.
The finishing touch was to pick up some scatter cushions. Given that the new seat covers were rather plain, we opted for some fun ones that we found on offer at Sainsbury’s, along with a couple of cushions that we don’t use indoors.
With the cushions in place, the first part of Penny’s interior makeover was complete.
Jen decided that she liked the pink curtains, so they’ve simply been put through a cool wash to freshen them up.
The two remaining decisions relate to the fitted carpets and locker doors. Removing carpets fitted under the furniture is no laughing matter, but it would help modernise the interior.
Bringing the cupboard doors and cabinets up-to-date would help, too, but badly applied paint can easily look scruffy.
Until then, we will be sitting comfortably in Penny’s now very sharp-looking lounge and congratulating ourselves on a successful budget tidy-up.
If you’re interested in a different type of cover, take a look at what our expert has to say about whether caravan covers are a good idea.
Future Publishing Limited, the publisher of Practical Caravan, provides the information in this article in good faith and makes no representation as to its completeness or accuracy. Individuals carrying out the instructions do so at their own risk and must exercise their independent judgement in determining the appropriateness of the advice to their circumstances and skill level. Individuals should take appropriate safety precautions and be aware of the risk of electrocution when dealing with electrical products. To the fullest extent permitted by law, neither Future nor its employees or agents shall have any liability in connection with the use of this information. You should check that any van warranty will not be affected before proceeding with DIY projects.
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